Success at SY 3
WJEC
Format of the paper
• One compulsory question in each
option testing AO 1
• Two additional questions from which
a choice may be made. These
assess AO1 and AO2
Reasoning
• Many candidates find 60 minute
questions challenging
• It gives candidates of all levels of
ability a chance to gain marks
• The compulsory question tests
knowledge.
Skills required:
• Essay structuring and planning
• Time skills (15 minutes and 45
minutes)
• Ability to respond to different
command words flexibly
AO 1 skills
• Candidates will be able to make specific, explicit
and detailed reference to a range of writers,
research and theory. Much of this material will
have explicit sociological content
• Answers will be expressed in appropriate
sociological language showing knowledge and
understanding.
• The quality of written communication is very
good, with few, if any, errors of spelling,
punctuation or grammar.
Specification content
The appropriate and accurate use of concepts and
terms relating to crime
This focuses on:
Definitions:
Key concepts and terms which could include:
crime, deviance, anomie, social control, underclass,
delinquency, sub-culture, moral panic, and
surveillance, hidden figure of crime, white collar
crimes, recorded crime, reported crime, victim
study, news values, and amplification of deviance.
Contemporary debates, issues, patterns and trends Debates:
in relation to social profile including gender,
Debates, patterns and trends with reference to
ethnicity, class, age and locality
control, crime rates and patterns of crime and
victimisation
Structures, organisations and forms of social
control including formal and informal control,
patterns of sentencing and conviction rates
Patterns of crime including notions of the ‘typical’
criminal and perceptions of crime, corporate and
white collar crime
Social control including patterns of conviction and
sentencing, the measurement of crime, the
reliability of official statistics and hidden figures of
crime.
Changing understanding of crime and criminal
behaviour and recent initiatives in crime control e.g.
policing
Understanding theories of crime
Explanations:
This will include theoretical views about the
usefulness, existence and definition of crime such
as functionalism, Marxism, the social construction
of crime with reference to structural, sub cultural,
interactionist, Marxist and Neo Marxist, realist,
feminist and postmodernist
AO 2 skills
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Candidates will relate answers directly to the question
under consideration and this link will be explicit.
Essays will be formally constructed with a clear and
logical argument.
Evaluation and analysis will be explicit throughout the
answers
Candidates will be able to make regular and explicit
use of the correct analytical and/or evaluative
language showing knowledge and understanding of
its meaning.
Candidates will be able to make explicit reference to
the wording of the question under consideration
The candidate may challenge the terms of the
question.
Language of evaluation
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Thus …
On the other hand …
In contrast …
By comparison …
However …
An alternative argument …
A strong argument …
Similarly …
Style
• Most wrote well in whichever
language was used. However …
• Use of personalisation – ‘I think…’
• Use of rhetorical questioning –
‘Marxists believe that … but is this
correct? Is it true? Do we believe it?’
Encourage
• Reference to recent debates, examples,
evidence, research and news events
• Good grammar and spelling
• Use of technical language
• Proper paragraphing
• Leaving enough space to add afterthoughts to paragraphs
• Reference to the wording and terms of
the question
Discourage …
• Learning answers off pat
• Personal commentaries
• Rhetorical questions and exaggerated
styles of writing
For further information, please
contact the subject officer at the
WJEC
Joanna Lewis
245 Western Avenue
Cardiff
CF5 2YX
joanna.lewis@wjec.co.uk